Reading Cameron Ann Morgan: LYKY
by xXJustSomeRandomKidXx
Summary: It's the day before school and Bex just found Cammie's CoveOps report. They begin to read. What happens when things get out of control? Rated T because I'm not sure how far this will go. R and R please! Has some Drama as well.
1. Introduction

**I don't think anyone else has done this in the Gallagher Girls section, but I've seen it in others. Like Song of the Lioness, I love that series too! **

**But at the end of GG4, it was the perfect opportunity!  
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><p>It was the day before school started when Rebecca Baxter had been walking in the Hall of History. She was about to leave, when Mr. Solomon's words, "Notice things" had taken a grip on her mind and she spotted a book on the case of Gillian Gallagher's sword. Before she had realized it, she began running toward it, hoping that perhaps, it might hold answers-however slim those chances may be.<p>

**"Targets Acquired, ten o'clock."**

Those words seemed familiar. She had said the very same thing to Cammie during winter break. After a quick scan of the first page, her thoughts were confirmed. It was the CoveOps report Cammie had written before she had runaway.

She quickly took off in search of her other roommates, Elizabeth Sutton and Macey McHenry, to show them her findings. It didn't take long; she _was _a Baxter, after all. She dragged them hurriedly to their suite and began explain what was written on the sheets of paper she carried. Their eyes began to brighten with tears as they remembered what had driven Cammie to runaway. They all understood why she did what she did, but that didn't mean they had to like it. But since they were spies, they hid their emotions and kept their faces neutral.

"So who wants to read first?" Bex asked her roommates.

"I will," said a voice they hadn't expect to hear at all.

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><p><strong>So this is my second story. Third if you count my one-shot. I promise the other chapters will be longer. This is just the introduction :]<br>**

**Who do you think it is? Whoever guesses right gets a preview. But only guess one person please, cuz if you list everyone, then it's not really fair :/**

**So Review please! :]  
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	2. Chapter 1

**Here is chapter 1! Excited? I am! 2918 of these words aren't mine in this chapter. The other 1308, are... I actually counted. Lol. Jk. I just did the math. **

**This is killing my book. I seriously wish I had the hardcover right now...  
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**Anyway, so I here's the disclaimer. I forgot it last time! My bad.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing** **you recognize.**

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><p>It was Rachel Morgan, their headmistress, but more importantly, Cammie's mother.<p>

"How did you get in here?" Bex asked, clutching the pink book like a lifeline, which, in a way, it was.

"I have my ways," she replied.

"So you want to read?" Liz asked timidly.

"I'm fine. I just thought you girls might want to start at the beginning." She carried with her, three more books. "I suggest you start with the blue notebook. It's from your little adventure with Josh," she winked, but there was still sorrow in her eyes, and then left after placing them on the floor.

"So, ummm. Who wants to read?" Liz asked after a good few minutes.

"I guess I will," Bex replied. She took the blue book as suggested and began to read.

**I suppose a lot of teenage girls feel invisible sometimes, like they just disappear. Well, that's me—Cammie the Chameleon. **

**But I'm luckier than most because, at my school, that's considered cool.  
>I go to a school for spies. <strong>

"Duh. Of course we know that," Macey said, reading a magazine. Although it didn't seem like it, she was listening intently. These were the words of her friend, after all.

**Of course, technically, the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women is a school for **_**geniuses**_**—not **_**spies**_**—and we're free to pursue any career that befits our exceptional educations. **

"No one ever pays attention to _that_," Bex stated. "It's like teaching us how to cook food, and then telling us we can't eat it!"

"Do you ever think of anything besides food?" Macey asked.

"Yes," Bex replied, slightly offended. It wasn't like she was fat…

**But when a school tells you that and then teaches you things like advanced encryption and fourteen different languages, it's kind of like big tobacco telling kids not to smoke, so all of us Gallagher Girls know lip service when we hear it. **

"Even I know it!" Liz exclaimed.

**Even my mom rolls her eyes but doesn't correct me when I call it spy school, and **_**she's**_** the headmistress. Of course, she's also a retired CIA operative, and it was her idea for me to write this, my first Covert Operations Report, to summarize what happened last semester. She's always telling us that the worst part of the spy life isn't the danger—it's the paperwork. **

**When you're on a plane home from Istanbul with a nuclear warhead in a hatbox, the last thing you want to do is write a report about it. So that's why I'm writing this—for the practice. **

"Well, she's got a point. I mean, who would want to _write_?" Macey questioned.

"Writers?" Liz replied.

"It was a rhetorical question, Liz," Bex explained with a roll of her eyes.

"Oh…" Liz flushed red and ducked her head.**  
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**If you've got a Level Four clearance or higher, you probably know all about us Gallagher Girls since we've been around for more than a hundred years (the school, not me—I'll turn sixteen next month!) **

"I think that was kind of obvious," Macey observed.

"Yeah, but it's Cammie. We wouldn't want anything else," Bex replied.

**But if you don't have that kind of clearance, then you probably think we're just an urban spy myth—like jet packs and invisibility suits—and you drive by our ivy-covered walls, look at our gorgeous mansion and manicured grounds, and assume, like everyone else, that the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women is just a snooty boarding school for bored heiresses with no place else to go. **

"That was the case for Macey!" Bex said. Macey glared at her, but made no commentary.

"But she's catching up so quick! It's nearly impossible, but she did it!" Liz exclaimed with a hint of pride in her voice, and gave Macey a smile, which she in turn, mirrored.

**Well, to tell you the truth, we're totally fine with that—it's one of the reasons no one in the town of Roseville, Virginia thought twice about the long line of limousines that brought my classmates back to campus last September.**

"Remember when you came out of the limo, Macey?"

"Yeah. My mom tried to convince me to go because there were horses here." She rolled her eyes. "We know how well that plan turned out," Macey finished.

**I watched from a window seat on the third floor of the mansion as the cars materialized out of the blankets of green foliage and turned through the towering wrought-iron gates. **

"Such description!" Bex observed dramatically.

**The half-mile long driveway curved through the hills, looking as harmless as Dorothy's yellow brick road, not giving a clue that it's equipped with laser beams that read tire treads and sensors that check for explosives, and one entire section that can open up and swallow a truck whole. (If you think that's dangerous, don't even get me started about the pond!) **

"Yeah. The pond. We almost drowned from it," Liz said with a frown.

"At least we got Cammie's dad's journal," Bex replied with a shrug.

**I wrapped my arms around my knees and stared through the window's wavy glass. The red velvet curtains were drawn around the tiny alcove, and I was enveloped by an odd sense of peace, knowing that in twenty minutes, the halls were going to be crowded; music was going to be blaring; and I was going to go from being an only child to one of a hundred sisters, so I knew to savor the silence while it lasted.**

**Then, as if to prove my point, a loud blast and the smell of burning hair came floating up the main stairs from the second-floor Hall of History,**

"Don't you just love the beginning of school?" Bex asked, but to no one in particular.

"Hey! That happened to me!" Liz cried.

"Your fault. You shouldn't have touched it," Bex shrugged.

"Well sorry. It was for the name of science! The workmanship was incredible! Besides, how was I supposed to know?"

"You could have just not touched it?" Bex suggested.

"Can we just continue?" Macey asked.

"Fine," Bex complied.

**Followed Professor Buckingham's distinguished voice crying, "Girls! I told you not to touch that!" The smell got worse, and one of the seventh-graders was probably still on fire, because Professor Buckingham yelled, "Stand still. Stand still, I say!" **

The three girls burst out laughing. When Bex had gotten sober, she continued.

**Then Professor Buckingham said some French swear words that the seventh-graders probably wouldn't understand for three semesters, and I remembered how every year during new student orientation one of the newbies will get cocky and try to show off by grabbing the sword Gillian Gallagher had used to slay the guy who was going to kill Abraham Lincoln—the first guy, that is, the one you never hear about.**

"That sounds like something you would do, Bex. Not Liz," Macey observed.

"True," Bex agreed.

**But what the newbies aren't told on their campus tour is that Gilly's sword is charged with enough electricity to...well...light your hair on fire.**

Liz involuntarily reached for her hair.

**I just love the start of school.**

"Don't we all?" Bex asked with a slight chuckle, while Macey gave an amused glance at Liz.

**I think our room used to be an attic, once upon a time.**

Liz interrupted, still holding her hair, "I believe it was. Based on the design, it would be logical." She gave a calculated look as she took in her surroundings.

**It has these cool dormers and oddly shaped windows and lots of little nooks and crannies, where a girl can sit with her back against the wall and listen to the thundering feet and squeals of hello that are probably pretty standard at boarding schools everywhere on the first day after summer break (but they probably stop being standard when they take place in Portuguese and Farsi).**

"Ughh. I hate squealing girls," Macey complained. "They're so annoying."

**Out in the hall, Kim Lee was talking about her summer n Singapore; and Tina Walters was declaring "Cairo was super cool. Johannesburg-not so much," **

"I've seen better," Macey shrugged.

"That's what you say about everything!" Bex exclaimed,

"Because it's true."

**which is exactly what my mom had said when I'd complained about how Tina's parents were taking her to Africa over the summer whereas **_**I **_**was going to have to visit my dad's parents on their ranch in Nebraska-an experience I'm fairly sure will never help me break out of an enemy interrogation facility or disarm a dirty bomb.**

"You never know," Bex shrugged. "It's possible."

"**Hey, where's Cammie?" Tina asked, but I wasn't about to leave my room until I could come up with a fish story to match the international exploits of my classmates, seventy percent of whom are the daughters of current or former government operatives-aka spies. Even Courtney Bauer had spent a week in Paris, and **_**her **_**parents are both optometrists, so you can see why I wasn't especially eager to admit that I'd spent three months plopped down right in the middle of North America, cleaning fish.**

"Poor Fish," Liz sympathized.

"What about Cammie? She had to gut them!" Bez exclaimed. _**(A/N I actually had to do this. The only way it got out was with a bunch of sawdust my dad made while he was renovating my house. I had to help him cuz it was for my room)**_

**I'd finally decided to tell them about the time I was experimenting with average household items that can be used as weapons and accidently decapitated a scarecrow (who knew knitting needled could do that kind of damage?), when I heard the distinctive thud of luggage crashing into a wall ad a soft, Southern, "Oh, Cammie…come out, come out, wherever you are."**

"Were you playing hide and seek, Liz?" Macey asked with amusement clear in her voice.

Liz blushed and gestured for Bex to continue.

**I peered around the corner and saw Liz posing in the doorway, trying to look like Miss Alabama, but bearing a greater resemblance to a toothpick in capri pants and flip-flops. A very **_**red **_**toothpick.**

"Hey! I don't look like a toothpick!" Liz complained.

"Uhhh. Right," Macey said.

**She smiled and said, "Did you miss me?"**

**Well, I **_**did **_**miss her, but I was totally afraid to hug her.**

"I'm not _that _weak. Am I?" Liz asked.

"Afraid so Liz," Bex said.

"**What happened to you?"**

**Liz rolled her eyes and just said, "Don't fall asleep by a pool in Alabama," as if she should have known better-which she totally should have. I mean, we're all technically geniuses and everything, but at age nine, Liz had the highest score on the third-grade achievement tests **_**ever**_**. The government keeps track of that kind of thing, so the summer before seventh grade, her parents got a visit from some big guys in dark suits and three months later, Liz was a Gallagher Girl-just not the kill-a-man-with-her-bare-hands variety. **

"My parents were so freaked out! They should really be more inconspicuous," Liz said. "I mean, really? Big guys in black suits. That's just scary when you have no idea who they are."

"True, but very entertaining when you're not on the receiving line," Bex said with a hint of laughter.

**If I'm ever on a mission, I want Bex beside me and Liz far, far away, with about a dozen computers and a chessboard-a fact I couldn't help but remember when Liz tried to fling her over a bookcase, demolishing my stereo and flattening a perfectly-scaled replica of DNA that I'd made out of papier-mâché in eighth grade.**

"I'm_ really _sorry about that," Liz looked miserable.

"**Oopsy daisy," Liz said, throwing her hand to her mouth.**

"Typical Liz," Bex said while looking at Liz with a slight smile.

**Sure, she knows cuss words in fourteen different languages, but when faced with a minor catastrophe, Liz says **_**oopsy daisy. **_**At that point I didn't care how sunburned she was-I had to hug my friend.**

**At six thirty exactly, we were in our uniforms, sliding our hands over the smooth mahogany banisters, and descending down the staircases that spiral gracefully to the foyer floor. Everyone was laughing (turns out my knitting needle story was a big hit), but Liz and I kept looking toward the door in the center of the atrium below.**

"We were really worried, you know," Liz said, looking at Bex.

"I'm here, aren't I?" Bex answered with mischievousness in her voice and eyes.

"**Maybe there was trouble with the plane?" Liz whispered. "Or customs? Or…I'm sure she's just late."I nodded and continued glancing down at the foyer as if, on cue, Bex was going to burst through the doors. But they stayed closed, and Liz's voice got squeakier as she asked, "Did you hear from her? I didn't hear from her. Why didn't we hear from her?"**

"I thought Bex was the drama queen here," Macey said while glancing at them both.

**Well, I would have been surprised if we **_**had **_**heard from her, to tell you the truth. As soon as Bex had told us that both her mom and her dad were taking a leave of absence to spend the summer with her, I knew she wasn't going to be much of a pen pal. **

"She knows me so well," Bex said.

**Leave it to Liz to come to a completely different conclusion.**

"**Oh my gosh, what if she dropped out?" Liz cranked up the worry in her voice. "Did she get **_**kicked **_**out?"**

"Why would you think that?" Bex demanded.

"Uhhh… Keep reading," Liz said nervously.

"**Why would you think that?"**

"**Well…"she said, stumbling over the obvious, "Bex always has been kind of **_**rules-optional**_**." Liz shrugged, and sadly, I couldn't disagree. "And why else would she be late? Gallagher Girls are never late! Cammie, you know something, don't you? You've got to know **_**something**_**!"**

"Why would you think that, Liz?" Macey asked. "Just because she's the headmistress's daughter doesn't mean anything."

Liz was too flustered to answer.

**Times like this are when it's no fun being the headmistress's daughter, because A) it's totally annoying when people think I'm in a loop I'm not in, and B) people always assume I'm I partnership with the staff, which really I'm not. Sure, I have private dinners with my mom on Sunday nights, and **_**sometimes **_**she leaves me alone in her office for five seconds, but that's it. Whenever school is in session, I'm just another Gallagher Girl (except for being the girl to whom the aforementioned A and B apply).**

"That is so true," Macey agreed.

**I looked back down at the front doors, then turned to Liz. "I bet she's just late," I said, praying that there would be a pop quiz over supper (nothing distracts Liz faster than a pop quiz).**

"Can you blame me?" Liz asked. "I don't want to fail!" Bex and Macey rolled their eyes. She was worried about nothing.

**As we approached the massive, open doors of the Grand Hall, where Gilly Gallagher supposedly poisoned a man at her own cotillion, I involuntarily glanced up at the electronic screen that read "English-American" even though I knew we always talk in our own language and accents for the welcome-back dinner. Our mealtime conversations wouldn't be taking place in "Chinese-Mandarin" for at least a week, I hoped.**

"You can hope, but that doesn't mean it won't happen," Bex commented.

**We settled at our usual table in the Grand Hall, and I finally felt at home. Of course, I'd actually been back for three weeks, but my only company has been the newbies and the staff. The only thing worse than being the only upperclassman in a mansion full of seventh graders is hanging out in the teachers' lounge watching your Ancient Languages professor put drops in the ears of the world's foremost authority on data encryption while he'll never go scuba diving again. (Ew, mental picture of Mr. Mosckowitz in a wet suit! Gross!)**

"EWWW!" All three girls said in unison while exchanging disgusted faces.

**Since a girl can only read so many back issues of **_**Espionage Today**_**,**

"Not me!" Liz exclaimed. "I need all the material for studying I can get!" Bex and Macey rolled their eyes at their friend's typical behavior.

**I usually spent those pre-semester days wandering around the mansion, discovering hidden compartments and secret passageways that are at least a hundred years old and haven't seen good dusting in that , I tried to spend time with my mom, but she'd been super busy and totally distracted.**

"Getting Mr. Solomon," Bex said.

"We know that _now_," Liz replied.

**Remembering this now, I thought about Bex's mysterious absence and suddenly began to worry that maybe Liz had been onto something. **

"Honestly, does Cammie not know me at all?" Bex asked.

**Then Anna Fetterman squeezed onto the bench next to Liz and asked, "Have you seen it? Did you look?"**

Macey interrupted, "Of course Liz looked at whatever it is. She's _Liz_."**  
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**Anna was holding a blue slip of paper that instantly dissolves when you put it in your mouth. (Even though it **_**looks **_**like it will taste like cotton candy, it doesn't-trust me!) **

"I'm actually thinking about working on making it taste better. Cammie does have a point," Liz said thoughtfully.**  
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**I don't know why they always put our class schedule on Evapopaper-probably so we can use up our stash of the bad-tasting kind and move on to the good stuff, like mint chocolate chip.**

"That might taste a bit funny," Liz interrupted. "I mean, think about it. It tastes like a cookie, but you feel paper in your mouth."

"True," agreed Macey.

**But Anna wasn't thinking about the Evavpopaer flavor when she yelled, "We have Covert Operations!" **

All three girls rolled thier eyes.**  
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**She sounded absolutely terrified, and I remembered that she was probably the only Gallagher Girl that Liz could take in a fistfight . I looked at Liz, and even **_**she **_**rolled her eyes at Anna's hysterics. After all, everyone knows sophomore year is the forst time we get to do anything that even approaches actual fieldwork. It's our first exposure to **_**real **_**spy stuff, but Anna seemed to be forgetting that the class itself was, sadly, kind of a cakewalk.**

"Not that year," Liz mumbled, but being spies (in training), they still heard her.**  
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"**I'm pretty sure we can handle it," Liz soothed, prying the paper from Anna's frail hands. "All Buckingham does is tell horror stories about all the stuff she saw in World Was Two and show slides, remember? Ever since she broke her hip she's-"**

"Very unspylike," Bex commented, while Macey just shrugged.**  
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"**But Buckingham is out!" Anna exclaimed, and **_**this **_**got my attention.**

**I'm pretty sure I stared at her for a second or two before saying, **

"She did," Liz confirmed.**  
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**"Professor Buckingham is still here, Anna," not adding that I'd spent half the morning coaxing Onyx, her cat, down the top shelf of the staff library. "That's got to be just a start-of-school-rumor." There were always plenty of those-like how some girl got kidnapped by terrorists, or one of the staff members won a hundred grand on **_**Wheel of Fortune.**_

"But that was actually true!" Liz said.**  
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**(Though, now that I think of it, that one was actually true.)**

"Oh..." Liz said awkwardly.**  
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"**No," Anna said. "You don't understand. Buckingham's doing some kind of semiretirement thing. She's gonna do orientation and acclimation for the newbies-but that's it. She's not teaching anymore."**

**Wordlessly, our heads turned, and we counted seats at the staff table. Sure enough, there was an extra chair.**

"**Then who's teaching CoveOps?" I asked.**

Bex stopped and said, "Wait. Who's teaching us this year?"

"I'm not sure. We'll probably find out tomorrow," Liz replied.

"You better hope it's not Townsend again," Macey commented.

"One can only hope," Bex said.**  
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**Just then a loud murmur rippled through the enormous room as my mom strolled through the doors at the back of the hall, followed by all the usual suspects-the twenty teachers I'd been looking at and learning from for the past three years. Twenty teachers. Twenty-one chairs. I know I'm a genius, but you do the math.**

"Anyone can do that math," Macey scoffed**. **Liz agreed readily while Bex rolled her eyes.**  
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**Liz, Anna, and I all looked at each other, then back at the staff table as we ran through the faces, trying to comprehend that extra chair.**

Liz interrupted, "It was just _there_! Mocking us." Bex thought Liz was losing her mind.**  
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**One face **_**was **_**new, but we were expecting that, because Professor Smith always returns from summer vacation with a whole new look-literally. His nose was larger, his ears more prominent, and a small mole had been added to his left temple, disguising what he claimed was the most wanted face on three continents. **

"I still haven't found out if it's true or not," Liz said while frowning.**  
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**Rumor has it he's wanted by gun smugglers in the Middle East, ex-KGB hit men in Eastern Europe, and a very upset ex-wife somewhere in Brazil. Sure, all this experience makes him a great Countries of the World (COW) professor, but the best thing Professor Smith brings to the Gallagher Academy is the annual anticipation of guessing what face he will assume in order to enjoy his summer break. He hasn't come back as a woman yet, but it's probably just a matter of time.**

"How awkward would that be?" Bex asked. "One day, seeing Mr. Smith as a woman. He'd be Ms. Smith. Knowing he'd had a sex change..." she trailed off.**  
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**The teachers took their seats, but **_**the chair **_**stayed empty as my mother took her place at the podium in the center of the long head table.**

"She makes that chair sound like it'll eat her," Bex said.

"Seriously? You're still thinking about food?" Macey asked incredulously.

"Food tastes good," Bex shrugged.

"Just continue reading," Liz said timidly.

"Why? You were already there."

"Yeah, but I want to know what Cammie thought."**  
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"**Women of the Gallagher Academy, who comes here?" she asked.**

**Just then, every girl at every table (even the newbies) stood and said in unison, "We are the sisters of Gillian."**

"**Why do you come?" my mother asked.**

"To learn her skills. Honor her sword. And keep her secrets," Macey and Liz said

"**To what end do you work?"**

"To the cause of justice and light."

"**How long will you strive?"**

"For all the days of our lives."

**We finished, and I felt a little like a character on one of my grandma's soap operas.**

**We sat down, but Mom remained standing. "Welcome back, students," she said, beaming. "This is going to be a wonderful year here at the Gallagher Academy. For our newest members"-she turned to the table of seventh graders, who seemed to shiver under her intense gaze- "welcome. You are about to begin the most challenging year or your young lives. Rest assured that you would not have been given this challenge were you not up to it. To our returning students, this year **_**will **_**mark many changes."**

"Like hot guys coming to our school," Bex muttered.

** She glanced at her colleagues and seemed to ponder something before turning back to face us. "We have come to a time when-" But before she could finish, the doors flew open, and not even the three year of training at a spy school prepared me for what I saw.**

"Her face was hilarious," Bex commented with a smile.**  
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**Before I say anymore, I should probably remind you that I GO TO A GIRLS' SCHOOL-that's **_**all **_**girls, **_**all**_** the time, with a few ear-drop-needing, plastic-surgery-getting male faculty members thrown in for good measure.**

"That plastic-surgery-getting male might be female sometime soon," Macey said with a smirk.**  
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** But when we turned around, we saw a man walking in our midst who would have made James Bond feel insecure. **

"_I_ could make James Bond feel insecure," Bex said.**  
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**Indiana Jones would have looked like a momma's boy compared to the man in the leather jacket with two days' growth of beard who walked to where my mother stood and then-horror of horrors-winked at her.**

"That was very inappropriate," Liz observed.**  
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"**Sorry I'm late," he said as he slid into the empty chair.**

"Look! Now it's going to eat him, Bex," Macey said sarcastically and Bex glared at her.**  
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**His presence was so unprecedented, so surreal, that I didn't even realize Bex had squeezed onto the bench between Liz and Anna, and I had to do a double take when I saw her, and remembered that five seconds ago she'd been MIA.**

"Does she have no faith in me?" Bex questioned.**  
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"**Trouble ladies?" she asked.**

"**Where have you been?" Liz demanded.**

"Apparently, neither do you, Liz."**  
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"**Forget that," Anna cut in. "Who is **_**he**_**?"**

**But Bex was a natural-born spy. She just raised her eyebrows and said, "You'll see."**

"So dramatic," Macey said. Bex just grinned.

"That's the end of the chapter," Bex said.

"Should we continue?" Liz asked.

"Maybe after dinner. I'm starving," Bex replied.

"For once, I'm not complaining. I'm hungry too," Macey agreed.

"Okay, after dinner," Liz said. Then they all left and went to the Grand Hall.

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><p><strong>How was it? Leave a review please! Check out my other story too! *grabs Zach and forces him to make puppy dog eyes* Come on! His eyes are irresistible!<strong>

**I think the only reason I started this is because I wanted to try 3POV.  
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**Any requests for who you want to come? Except for Cammie, cuz I have no idea how to get her back from running away...**

**I was listening to Hush by Emily Osment and Josh Ramsay when I wrote this. Got it because of Josh, but surprisingly, her voice actually works o.O**

**I went hiking yesterday and I got dirt stuck in my contacts. Definitely bringing sunglasses next time...  
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**Dedications! Thanks for reviewing! ^_^  
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xXFroYoYumm13Xx 

MayaRenee-GGFan

GallagherBlackthorneZammie

Spies Do Bad Things For Goode Reasons (sorry! Fanfiction won't let me write your name properly...)

CanadianAngel97

zammieloverforever


	3. Chapter 2

On their way to the Grand Hall, Liz suddenly stopped and looked at her friends. "What if Mr. Smith was actually Ms. Smith before and now he's a transgender…" she trailed off.

"That would be pretty..." Macey trailed off.

"Awkward?" Bex supplied.

"I can't imagine him as a woman. It's just… impossible. Maybe I could go on my computer later and see?" Liz asked timidly.

"Sure, but after dinner. I'm starving," Bex answered.

Dinner passed by like every other year before for them, except for the fact that Cammie wasn't there. Once they had gotten back to their suite, Liz went straight to her computer and began got a picture of Mr. Smith and began to transformation that would make him look like a girl.

Bex glanced at the screen after a few minutes and her eyes got wide. "Oh my God. Is that Mr. Smith?" Liz nodded her head.

Macey looked up from her magazine, and said, "That actually looks like a boy that looks like a girl that looks like a boy."

"Eh?" Liz couldn't believe she just said 'Eh'. She cleared her throat and said, "I don't understand."

Macey rolled her eyes, but explained anyway. "In that picture, Mr. Smith is a guy that looks like a girl that looks like a guy. If you don't get it, mull it over in your head for a bit. It'll make sense."

After a minute of contemplation, Liz understood what she meant, and slowly nodded. "I get it. It actually makes sense. Especially when you look at this picture."

"Great," Bex said sarcastically. "Now why don't we get back to the book?"

"So who's reading this time?" Macey asked.

"I will, I guess," Liz said. She looked around the room. "Ummm. Guys, where is it?"

"It should be by my bed," Bex replied.

Liz walked over. "It's not there."

"That's where I put it," Bex said.

"Who has it then?" Macey questioned.

"When did Zach leave?" Bex asked suspiciously.

"When school ended," Liz replied.

"Did Abby come back?"

"Not that I know of," Liz said slowly.

"You know what this means," Macey said mischievously.

"Time to spy," Bex said with a grin.

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><p>Let's go see what the guys have been up to...<p>

"Can you believe it?" Grant asked his roommates, Zach and Jonas.

"No, actually," Zach replied.

"Well believe it," Jonas cut in. "We're on our way there right now."

"This semester is just going to turn into a disaster," Zach moaned.

"How do you know that?" Grant questioned.

"Call it a gut feeling." They all knew to trust their gut.

* * *

><p><strong>Back at Gallagher...<strong>

"Oopsy Daisy," Liz said as she tripped. "Uhh guys?" They were busy planning on what they needed to do.

"Hmmm?" They asked simultaneously.

"The book is right here..." Liz answered while pulling it out from underneath their rug.

"..."

"BEX!" Macey exclaimed.

"Sorry," she said sheepishly. "So ummm...Does this mean we're not going to spy anymore?"

Macey sighed. "I guess."

"I suppose I should start reading then," Liz said awkwardly..

**Bex had spent six hours on a private jet, but her cappuccino-colored skin was glowing, and she looked as if she'd just walked out of a Noxzema commercial, so I really wanted to be petty and point out that the sign in the foyer said we were suppose to be speaking English with _American _accents during the Welcome Back Dinner. **

"Technicalities." Bex dismissed it with a wave of her hand while sinking into a bean bag chair.**  
><strong>

**But as the only non-U.S. citizen Gallagher Girl in history, Bex was used to being an exception. My mom had bent some serious rules when her old friends from England's M16 called and asked if their daughter could be a Gallagher Girl. Admitting Bex had been Mom's first controversial act (but _not _her last).**

"What else did she do?" Macey asked.

"Lots of things," Bex replied**. **Macey glared at her before looking at Liz to continue.**  
><strong>

**"You have a good holiday, then?" Throughout the hall, girls were beginning to eat, but Bex just blew a bubble with her gum and grinned, daring us to ask her for the story.**

"Now I feel like having some more gum," Bex said, then stood up and started rummaging through her desk for some.**  
><strong>

**"Bex, if you know something, you've got to tell _us_," Liz demanded, even though it was totally pointless. _No one _can make Bex do _anything _she doesn't want to do.**

Macey and Liz exchanged knowing looks, while Bex was still looking for some gum.**  
><strong>

** I may be a chameleon, and Liz may be the next Einstein, but when it came to general stubbornness, Bex is the best spy ever!**

"Was that an insult?" Bex called from under her bed.**  
><strong>

**She smirked, and I knew she'd probably been planning this scene since she was halfway over the Atlantic Ocean (in addition to being stubborn, Bex is also quite theatrical).**

"It's pretty fun," Bex defended, getting out with her hair still perfect.**  
><strong>

** She waited until all eyes were on her - holding the silence until Liz was about to explode, then she took a warm roll from the basket on the table and nonchalantly said, "New teacher." She tore the bread in half and slowly buttered it. "We gave him a ride from London this morning. He's an old pal of my father's."**

**"Name?" Liz asked, probably already planning how she was going to hack into the CIA headquarters at Langley for details as soon as we were free to go back to our rooms.**

"Umm. Maybe..." Liz commented.**  
><strong>

**"Solomon," Bex said, eyeing us. "Joe Solomon." She sounded eerily like the black, teenage, female James Bond.**

Macey rolled her eyes, Bex smirked, and Liz continued reading.**  
><strong>

**We all turned to look at Joe Solomon. He had the scruffy beard and restless hands of an agent fresh off a mission. Around me, the hall filled with whispers and giggles - fuel that would have been the rumor mill running high by midnight - and I remembered that, even though the Gallagher Academy is a school for girl geniuses, sometimes the emphasis should be kept on the _girl._**

"No way! Then we'd be boy deprived!" Bex gasped in horror.

**The next morning was torture. Absolute torture! **

"Now she's the one being dramatic, don't you think?" Bex asked.**  
><strong>

**And that's _not _a word I use lightly, considering the family business. So maybe I should rephrase: the first day of classes was _challenging._**

**We didn't exactly go to bed early...or even a little late...or even at all, unless you count lying on the faux-fur rug in the common room with the entire sophomore class sprawled around me as the basis for a good night's sleep. When Liz woke us up at seven, we decided we could either primp up for an hour and skip breakfast, or throw on our uniforms and eat like queens, before Professor Smith's 8:05 COW lectures.**

"The choice should have been obvious," Liz scoffed.**  
><strong>

**B.S. (Before Solomon), waffles and bagels would have won out for sure. **

"It still should have," Liz commented.**  
><strong>

**But today, Professor Smith had a lot of eyelined and lip-glossed girls with growling stomachs listening to him talk about civil unrest in the Baltic States when 8:30 rolled around. **

"Wow. That must have been really awkward for him..." **  
><strong>

**I looked at my watch, **

"Very pointless," Bex remarked.**  
><strong>

**ultimate pointless gesture at the Gallagher Academy, because classes run precisely on time, but I had to see how many seconds were standing between me and lunch. (11, 705, just in case you're curious.)**

**When COW was over, we ran up two flights of stairs to the fourth floor for Madame Dabney's Culture and Assimilation lessons which, sadly, that day did not include tea. **

"I don't really like tea," Macey said. "I don't really see the problem."**  
><strong>

**Then it was time for third period.**

"Yay. Third period. Whoopdy freaking doo," Macey said sarcastically.**  
><strong>

**I had a pain in my neck from sleeping funny, at least five hours' worth of homework, and a new found realization that woman cannot live on cherry-flavored lip gloss alone. I dug in the bottom of my bag and found a very questionable breath mint, and figured that if I was going to die of starvation, I should at least have minty-fresh breath for the benefit of whatever classmate or faculty member would be forced to give me CPR.**

"Wow. What an overachiever," Bex said, rolling her eyes.**  
><strong>

**Liz had to go by Mr. Mosckowitz's office to drop off an extra-credit essay she'd written over the summer (yea, she's _that _girl),**

"I _like _getting good grades," Liz told the book defensively, which, admittedly, made her feel silly.**  
><strong>

** so I was alone with Bex when we reached the base of the grand staircase and turned into the small corridor that was one of three ways to the Subs, or subfloors, where we'd never been allowed before.**

"No need to get all dramatic," Bex sighed.

Macey and Liz rolled their eyes at the irony.

"What?" asked Bex. "That was being _theatrical._"

"Right," Macey said with a straight face, then urged Liz to continue reading.

**Standing in front of the full-length mirror, we tried hard not to blink or do anything that might confuse the optical scanner that was going to verify that we were, in fact, sophomores and not freshmen trying to sneak down to the Subs on a dare. I studied our reflections and realized that I, Cameron Morgan, the headmistress' daughter, who knew more about the school than any Gallagher Girl since Gilly herself, was getting ready to go deeper into the vault of Gallagher secrets. Judging from the goose bumps on Bex's arm, I wasn't the only one who got chills at the thought of it.**

"Bex? Scared?" Macey gasped. "Who would've thought..." she finished with her own version of _theatrical._

**A green light flashed in the eyes of a painting behind us. The mirror slid aside, revealing a small elevator that would take us one floor beneath the basement to the Covert Operations classroom and - if you want to be dramatic about it - our destinies.**

"Yup. Be dramatic about it Cammie," Liz muttered bitterly. "Leaving us without a word except these books is pretty dramatic too."

**"Cammie," Bex said slowly, "we're in."**

**We were sitting calmly, checking our (synchronized) watches, and all thinking the exact same thing: something is definitely different.**

"Really..." Macey said sarcastically.

**The Gallagher mansion is made of stone and wood. It has carved banisters and towering fireplaces a girl can curl up in front of on snowy days and read all about who killed JFK (the _real _story), **

"So who _did _kill him?" Macey asked, slightly curious.

"Don't worry about that right now," Liz replied.

**but somehow that elevator had brought us into a space that didn't belong in the same century, much less the same building, as the rest of the mansion. The walls were frosted glass. The tables were stainless steel. But the absolute weirdest thing about the Covert Operations classroom was that our teacher wasn't in it.**

"How very spy-like," Macey said mockingly.

**Joe Solomon was late - so late, I was beginning to get a little resentful that I hadn't taken the time to go steal some M&M's from my mom's desk, because, frankly, a two-year-old Tic Tac simply doesn't satisfy the hunger of a growing girl.**

**We sat quietly as the seconds ticked away, but I guess the silence became too much for Tina Walters, because she leaned across the aisle and said, "Cammie, what do you know about him?"**

Liz pursed her lips, Bex tightened her jaw, and Macey just sighed. Bex and Liz knew the onslaught of questions were coming. Macey was just annoyed that Liz stopped reading.

**Well, _I _only knew what Bex had told me, but Tina's mom writes a gossip column in a major metropolitan newspaper that shall remain nameless (since that's her cover and all), so there was no way Tina wasn't going to try to get to the bottom of this story. **

Macey shook her head slightly at the typical behavior she had come to known from Tina Walters.

**Soon I was trapped under an avalanche of questions like, "Where's he from?" and "Does he have a girlfriend?" and "Is it true he killed a Turkish ambassador with a thong?" I wasn't sure if she was talking about the sandals or the panties, but in any case, I didn't have the answer.**

"It was definitely the sandals," Liz answered innocently.

"You're wrong. It was obviously the panties," Bex retorted.

"Sandals."

"Panties."

"Sandals."

"Panties."

"San-"

"Guys. Quit it," Macet interrupted calmly. "Liz, just keep reading."

Liz complied. Albeit a bit grudgingly.

**"Come on," Tina said. "I heard Madame Dabney telling Chef Louis that your mom was working on him all summer to get him to take the job. You had to hear something!"**

"I suppose that makes sense. Even if it's just a bit," Liz remarked.

**So Tina's interrogation did have one benefit: I understood the hushed phone calls and locked doors that had kept my mother distracted for weeks. I was just starting to process what it meant, when Joe Solomon strolled into class - five minutes late.**

**His hair was slightly damp, his white shirt neatly pressed - and it's either a tribute to his dreaminess or our education that it took me two full minutes to realize he was speaking in Japanese.**

"Dreaminess," Bex and Macey replied.

"I suppose considering our education here..." Liz trailed off.

**"What is the capital of Brunei?"**

**"Bandar Seri Begawan," we replied.**

**"The square root of 97,969 is..." he asked in Swahili.**

**"Three hundred and thirteen," Liz answered in math, because, as she likes to remind us, math _is _the universal language.**

**"A Dominican dictator was assassinated in 1961," he said in Portugese. "What was his name?"**

**In unison, we all said, "Rafael Trujillo."**

**(An act, I would like to point out, that was _not committed by a Gallagher Girl, despite rumors to the contrary.)_**

**I was just starting to get into the rhythm of out little game, when Mr. Solomon said, "Close your eyes," in Arabic.**

"Uh-oh," Bex said, slightly singing. "We're in trouble."

**We did as we were told.**

**"What color are my shoes?" This time he spoke in English and, amazingly, thirteen Gallagher Girls sat there quietly without an answer.**

**"Am I right-handed or left-handed?" he asked, but didn't pause for a response. "Since I walked into this room I have left fingerprints in five different places. Name them!" he demanded, but was met with empty silence.**

**"Open your eyes," he said, and we did, I saw him sitting on the sorner of his desk, one foot on the floor and the other hanging loosely off the side. "Yep," he said. "You girls are pretty smart. But you're also kind of stupid."**

"There's no denying that. Especially after what just happened," Liz answered with a sigh.

**If I hadn't known for a scientific fact that the earth simply can't stop moving, we all would have sworn it had just happened.**

"I probably would have," Bex said.

**"Welcome to Covert Operations. I'm Joe Solomon. I've never taught before, but I've been doing this stuff for eighteen years, and I'm still breathing, so that means I know what I'm talking about. This is _not _going to be like your other classes."**

**My stomach growled, and Liz, who had opted for a full breakfast and a ponytail, said, "Shhh," as if I could make it stop.**

"Well," Liz started. "She could have eaten breakfast. No point dressing up for someone that could be as old as my dad."

**"Ladies, I'm going to get you ready for what goes on." He paused and pointed upward. "Out there. It's not for everyone, and that's why I'm going to make this hard on you. Damn hard. Impress me, and next year those elevators might take you one floor lower. But if I have even the slightest suspicion that you are not supremely gifted in the area of fieldwork, then I'm going to save your life right now and put you on the Operations and Research track."**

"No need for him to decide that. I already knew I was going to the R&D track," Liz answered.

**He stood and placed his hands in his pockets. "Everyone starts in this business looking for adventure, but I don't care what your fantasies look like, ladies. If you can't get out from behind those desks and show me something other than book smarts, then none of you will ever see Sublevel Two."**

"Harsh, but relevant," Macey remarked.

**Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mick Morrison following his every word, almost salivating at the sound of it, because Mick had been wanting to hurt someone for years. Unsurprisingly, her beefy hand flew into the air. "Does that mean you'll be teaching us firearms, sir?" she shouted as if a drill sergeant might make her drop and do push-ups.**

**But Mr. Solomon only walked around the desk and said, "In this business, if you need a gun, then it's probably too late for one to do any good." Some of the air seemed to go out of Mick's toned body. "But on the bright side," he told her, "maybe they'll bury you with it - that's assuming you get to be buried."**

Bex's eyes widened a fraction of an inch.**  
><strong>

**My skin burned red. Tears filled my eyes. Before I even knew what was happening, my throat was so tight I could barely breathe as Joe Solomon stared at me. Then, as soon as my eyes locked with his, he glanced away.**

**"The lucky ones come home, even if it _is_ in a box."**

Liz stopped reading, not wanting to go any further.

"Liz." She looked at Macey. "Just keep reading. In case you didn't know. I wasn't there."

Liz took a deep breathe, then continued.

**Although he hadn't mentioned me by name, I felt my classmates watching me.**

"That's because we were," Bex muttered dryly.

** They all know what happened to my dad - that he went on a mission, that he didn't come home. I'll probably never know any more than those two simple facts, but that those two facts were all that mattered. People call me The Chameleon here - if you go to spy school, I guess that's a pretty good nickname. I wonder sometimes what made me that way, what keeps me still and quiet when Liz is jabbering and Bex is, well, _Bexing._ **

Bex smiled slightly at that.

**Am I good at going unnoticed because of my spy genetics or because I've always been shy? Or am I just the girl people would rather not see - lest they realize how easily it could happen to them.**

"Spy genetics?" Liz asked hopefully. Not expecting an answer.**  
><strong>

**Mr. Solomon took another step, and my classmates pulled their gazes away just that quickly - everyone but Bex, that is. She was inching toward the edge of her chair, ready to keep me from tearing out the gorgeous green eyes of our new hot teacher as he said, "Get good, ladies. Or get dead."**

"She probably wouldn't have gotten away with it," Bex remarked.

"Are you sure about that?" Macey asked quietly. "Rage and adrenaline is pretty dangerous when mixed together."

**A part of me wanted to run straight to my mother's office and tell her what he'd said, that he was talking about Dad, implying that it had been his fault - that he wasn't _good enough. _But I stayed seated, possibly out of paralyzing anger but more probably because I feared, somewhere inside me, that Mr. Solomon was right and I didn't want my mother to say so.**

**Just then, Anna Fetterman pushed through the frosted-glass doors and stood panting in front of the class. "I'm sorry," she said to Mr. Solomon, still gasping for breath. "The stupid scanners didn't recognize me, so the elevator locked me in, and I had to listen to a five-minute prerecorded lecture about trying to sneak out of bounds, and..." Her voice trailed off as she studied the teacher and his very unimpressed expression, which I thought was a little hypocritical coming from a man who had been five minutes late himself.**

"I thought so too," Liz said.

"I think everyone did, Liz," Bex replied.**  
><strong>

**"Don't bother taking a seat," Mr. Solomon said as Anna started toward a desk in the back of the room. "Your classmates were just leaving."**

**We all looked at our recently synchronized watches, which showed the exact same thing - we had forty-five minutes of class time left. Forty-five valuable and never-wasted minutes. After what seemed like forever, Liz's hand shot into the air. **

**"Yes?" Joe Solomon sounded like someone with far better things to do.**

"Which he probably did," Macey remarked lightly.**  
><strong>

**"Is there any homework?" she asked, and the class turned instantly from shocked to irritated. (Never ask _that _question in a room full of girls who are all black belts in karate.)**

**"Yes," Solomon said, holding the door in the universal signal for _get out. _"Notice things."**

"That wasn't too hard, right?" Liz asked.

"I guess not," Bex answered.

Macey just looked at Liz to finish reading.

**As I headed down the slick white hallway to the elevator that had brought me there, I heard my classmates walking in the opposite direction, toward the elevator closest to our rooms. After what had just happened, I was glad to hear their footsteps going the other way. I wasn't surprised when Bex came to stand beside me.**

"Of course not. Gallagher girls stick together," said Bex.

**"You okay?" she asked, because that's a best friend's job.**

**"Yes," I lied, because that's what spies do.**

**We rode the elevator to the narrow first-floor hallway, and as the doors slid open, I was seriously considering going to my mother (and not just for M&M's), when I stepped into the dim corridor and heard a voice cry, "Cameron Morgan!"**

"And the drama continues..." Macey muttered, looking at Bex.

**Professor Buckingham was rushing down the hall, and I couldn't imagine what would make the genteel British lady speak in such a way, when, above us, a red light began to whirl, and a screaming buzzer pierced our ears so that we could barely hear the cries of the electronic voice that pulsed with the light, "CODE RED. CODE RED. CODE RED."**

"Ahhh. Finally. Here I come girls," Macey said smiling.**  
><strong>

**"Cameron Morgan!" Buckingham bellowed again, grabbing Bex and me by our arms. "Your mother needs you. NOW!"**

"Well, that's the end of the chapter," Liz said."I'm going to go check on possible Ms. Smith transgender operations now."

"Okay. I'm going to find somehting else to eat," Bex siad standing up. "Tell me if anything interesting comes up."

"Alright," she muttered, already working on her computer.

"I'm just going to sleep," Macey said.

* * *

><p>"Ready?" Zach asked his friends.<p>

"Ready as I'll ever be," Jonas muttered.

"Let's just get this over with," said Grant.

"I'd have thought you'd be more excited," Jonas remarked.

"Whatever."

* * *

><p><strong>AN Sorry I've been gone for a while. My video card burned out and when I got it replaced, I couldn't log into fanficiton because that thing where you write in the letters you see wouldn't show up and it kept telling me to fill it out even though it wasn't there! But my computer is finally letting me log on.  
><strong>

**For my other stories, I swear I had them in my IPod, but SOMEONE STOLE IT FROM MY LOCKER! D; High school is dangerous; full of homework, tests, projects, and thieves...  
><strong>

**It was the touch, 4G 32GB :/ Some people are just cruel...**

**Anyway, I have a question. Do you like it when I reply to your reviews?**

**Also, you guys will be so proud of me :) I made it onto the basketball team! :D Which means less time to write, so maybe not so much...  
><strong>


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